I was in sunny Cape Town and about 3 hours behind India, time-wise… So when I woke up that morning, I was surprised to see that my BBM was inundated with the same update over and over. Everyone was talking about Dev Saab’s sad demise… Some had his song lyrics as their status messages, others used a quieter, ‘RIP Dev Saab’, to pay tribute to him. But each and every person I knew back home was feeling the loss. And here I was, in a land far, far away from home… Amongst people who maybe had heard of Dev Anand, but in most likelihood had not, and were detached from his death… Unaffected and uncaring. As the morning turned into afternoon, the BBM updates turned to the mundane for fodder. Work stress, deadlines, schedules, joys, sorrows and fights demanded attention. And the time for mourning was clearly over. The world was moving on, minus one amazing man this time. And as I sat on the beach, looking at the sky above me, I couldn’t help but wonder… Is this what is to become of us all? That no matter how amazing someone’s journey, a common fate awaits us all at the other side of the finishing line… To become just another BBM update?
Dev Saab was a man possessed by the art of film-making and his love for cinema... For him, the celluloid world was far more real, more his own, than the physical world we all live in. And he enjoyed his world till the very end… making and talking films till his last breath. All his life, all that he’d ever done was to make films. Good, bad or unbelievable, he’s made them regardless of what anyone thought. And as I sat in Cape Town, away from Mumbai and the life that I have here, I began to realise that somewhere, we all do this to ourselves.
We become so obsessed with what we do... With our lives… Our existence… Our goals, purposes, wants and wishes, that we forget that there exists a huge world outside the box we call our mind… A universe that doesn’t really know who you are or what you do. A universe that doesn’t care about your achievements or ambitions… We forget, far too easily, that at the end of the day, we’re just a tiny little speck in the universe… And we start believing that the world revolves around the speck that is us. All our time is spent in thinking about what we’re doing and what our lives mean. We get so engrossed, so involved in our lives that we forget the larger picture... we forget that there is more to life than just us. No matter how big we think we are, there will always be a part of the world that doesn’t even know who we are or what we do. They don’t care whether our last film was a hit or not… Whether our client got media coverage or not… Or whether the actor is happy with his clothes or not… They don’t care what’s happening in OUR universe.
One of the things that traveling has taught me is that we shouldn’t take ourselves, our lives, our work and everything around us so seriously… We shouldn’t get so obsessed with it that everything starts revolving around one tiny cog in the wheel… Because when that happens, we tend to blow up and exaggerate that cog’s importance. Everything around it becomes larger than life. We lose perspective. And once you lose perspective, you’re in no way different from a headless chicken that clucks around in all directions.
I’ve witnessed two football world cups and travelled across several countries for it. And some of my most cherished memories from those times revolve around the people that I’ve met while travelling. I’ve met people from those corners of the world that have never even heard of Mumbai or Bollywood. Nor do they want to. I’ve met people who don’t give a damn about Shah Rukh Khan and would look at me like I’d sprouted horns if I started discussing the falling TRPs of shows on Indian TV… When you are in this large gathering of people from all over the world, people who don’t care about the things you do, people whose lives are diametrically opposite to yours, you learn to look at things the way an outsider looking in would see them. And most often, you don’t end up liking what you see. And things that seemed life-altering, stop mattering… The definitions change and the glass casing in which you had unknowingly locked yourself, comes crashing down. It becomes easier to breathe when that happens, doesn’t it? Because the air isn’t thick with the tension of failed expectations, mental pedestals and broken dreams. It is clean and pure. And infuses you with life, instead of sucking it out of you.
But it’s not just work that we use as the hinge for our precarious lives. Our relationships have an equal role to play. We become dependent on the people around us. Sometimes for material gain, sometimes for what they do for us mentally, emotionally or physically. What they say and do and think becomes prism through which we see ourselves. So a lot of our effort goes into acting in a manner that they will approve of. But we forget that our happiness is bigger, and much beyond the scope of what someone else’s perception of us is.
We lead such self-centered lives, don’t we? All we care about is what is happening within a radius of 2 sq. kms of our lives… The people who live there and the work that we do in that area… We obssess about it and make it the centre of our existence. We push ourselves, our bodies, our limits to reach that elusive thing called success… Something that lingers just an inch away from our grasp. We’re constantly climbing the hill, hoping that someday we’ll reach the top, that one day we’ll be on the number one position. We’re forever hungry for that look of appreciation in someone’s eyes… For that pat on the back... Not realising that it doesn’t really matter… Because once you jump out of the fish-bowl and into the pond, you will see a world that you had never imagined. A world where there will always be a bigger fish, a world that will make you realise that you’re just one tiny part of a large, complex, multi-layered eco-system.
No matter what we do, what we achieve and what journey life ends up taking us on, ultimately, it’s all going to come down to a one-line BBM update… And only for a few short hours. So let’s not think that everything begins and ends with us… Because it doesn’t.
